In a season in which Ashley Force Hood has emerged as one of
the top performers on the NHRA pro tour, drag racing icon John Force this week tries to
separate himself from a formidable pack of pretenders and join his daughter on the
short list of real contenders for the Full Throttle championship.
With just eight events remaining before the start of the Countdown to the
Championship, Force is battling with reigning series champ Cruz Pedregon, Bob Tasca
III and his own teammates, Mike Neff and Robert Hight, for the final three transfer
positions.
Entering this week's 21st annual O'Reilly Summer Nationals at Heartland
Park-Topeka, Force and his Castrol GTXR High MileageT Ford occupy the No. 9
position. That's far from secure, especially since most believe that while 10 drivers
ultimately will qualify, only the top five or six have more than an outside shot at the
$500,000 championship.
If that's true, then Force has even more work to do, especially since he presently is
in the midst of the longest stretch of races in his career in which he hasn't appeared in a
final round (23 straight).
"We've been in the hunt (for a 2009 tour victory)," Force said, "but we haven't put
this Mustang in the winners' circle. We're better than we were last year, but we're not
where we need to be. We don't need to go rounds; we need to win a race."
That's the attitude that earned the sport's biggest winner a record 126 tour
victories and 14 championships.
Unfortunately, since his crash, Force's world has changed from top to bottom. The
Ford he is driving this week isn't even close to being the same car in which he crashed
at the Texas Motorplex.
Bulked up like a bodybuilder, the new generation chassis is 150 pounds heavier than
its predecessor and since it also is stiffer, the result of additional bracing, it doesn't have
the same power transference as the old one.
Add a new clutch set-up and the installation of the JFR-developed Ford BOSS 500
nitro motor to the mix and co-crew chiefs Austin Coil and Bernie Fedderly basically
have had to start from scratch.
This week, though, Force is optimistic about his chances of returning to form.
That's because, while he doesn't have the paper on Heartland Park-Topeka, he
unquestionably is the figurative "owner" of the concrete and asphalt track to which he
returns as defending Funny Car champion.
If he can leverage that "ownership" position, one that includes nine victories and
a winning percentage of 80.1 per cent (67-16), he still believes he can earn a Top 5
spot by the time the tour moves to Charlotte, N.C., for the start of the Countdown.
Did You Know?
- John is trying to extend to a record-setting 23 the number of consecutive seasons in
which he has won at least one NHRA tour event. He currently shares that record with
Warren Johnson.
- John hasn't qualified No. 1 since Sept. 1, 2006. That's 60 races, the longest drought
of his career
Force and Coil:
- Over the 25 years they have been together, John Force and Austin Coil have gone to
the final round in 42 per cent of ALL the races they've run (198 of 473) in the NHRA
series.
- Force and Coil were winless in their first 31 races together, finally earning a
breakthrough win on June 28, 1987 at Montreal, Canada.
- En route to 14 NHRA championships and 126 tour victories, there always have been
three constants - Force, Coil and Castrol.
At Heartland Park-Topeka:
- John has won nine times at Heartland Park. The only tracks on which he has secured
more NHRA tour victories are Auto Club Raceway at Pomona (Calif.) and Brainerd
(Minn.) International Raceway, each of which has yielded 11 wins.
- Last year's win in the O'Reilly Summer Nationals was John's only victory of the year
and it remains his only win since coming back from the 2007 crash in Dallas, Texas,
that almost claimed his life.
- Heartland Park is one of three tracks on which John has won 80 per cent of all the
two-car races in which he has been involved. The others are BIR and Virginia
Motorsports Park in Richmond.
- Few remember that when Chuck Etchells beat John into the 4.90s at Heartland Park
in 1993, becoming the first Funny Car driver to break the 5.00 second barrier, it was
John who left the track with a new NHRA national record of 5.035 seconds.
- En route to Driver of the Year honors in 1996, John swept both of the races then
contested at Heartland Park and lowered the NHRA national record to 4.889.
- John has opposed current series champion Cruz Pedregon in four final rounds at
Heartland Park, winning two (spring, 1994, and spring, 1996) and losing two (summer,
1992, and summer, 1994).
http://www.johnforceracing.com
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